Luisel Ramos
UruguayBiography of Luisel Ramos
Luisel Ramos, an Uruguayan model, was once considered one of the most famous models in her country. However, it was her tragic death that brought her worldwide fame. On August 2, 2006, Ramos passed away from heart failure caused by excessive malnutrition due to anorexia.
During her final appearance at the Montevideo Fashion Week in Uruguay, Ramos felt unwell. After her first runway walk, she went to the dressing room to prepare for her second appearance, but there she lost consciousness. An ambulance was immediately called, but unfortunately, the doctors' efforts to revive her were unsuccessful.
According to Ramos' father, a few days before the show, she had not eaten anything at all. Prior to that, the model had spent three months on an incredibly strict diet consisting mainly of lettuce salad and diet coke. At the time of her death, Ramos had a body mass index (BMI) of only 14.5, with a height of 1.75 meters and weighing only 44 kilograms. It is worth mentioning that the World Health Organization considers a BMI below 16 as indicative of severe malnutrition.
Ramos' death caused a significant public outcry. As a result, the Madrid Fashion Week decided in September 2006 to ban models with a BMI below 18 from participating. In December of the same year, Italian fashion designers also stopped allowing models with a "zero size" on their runways.
Tragically, on February 13, 2007, Luisel Ramos' younger sister, Eliana Ramos, passed away under similar circumstances. Like Luisel, Eliana worked as a model and died from a heart attack believed to be caused by malnutrition. Shortly after Luisel's death, Eliana spoke to journalists and revealed that many Uruguayan models suffered from nervous anorexia and subjected themselves to constant starvation.
Ramos was not the first, nor the last, model to lose her life in pursuit of the distorted ideals of beauty. Shortly after her death, Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston also died, having sustained herself solely on apples and tomatoes.
